Tashry: All political parties lose members between elections. There are competing interests and priorities: all that is quite understandable. While that is unfortunate for the larger parties, when elections approach their suppoerters, in businesses, trade unions, professional associations, etc, come to their aid. Any bad publicity has a disproportionale effect on the smaller parties. In addition, they are dependent upon activists, to compensate for the limited paid employees at their disposal.
Large political parties can sponsor legislation which can be advantageous to their donors. Honours, from peerages to MBEs', frequently gravitate to those who, perhaps coincidentally, are also individual donors, or chairmen of banks, unions, professional organisations, which contribute to the larger political parties.
Percentage comparisions between the larger and smaller parties doesn't make sense divorced from these wider considerations. All parties should be clean and trustworthy: for the smaller parties, those same attributes can determine whether they live or die.
It isn't a matter of what anti-UKIP people say or don't say, it is a matter of what we can conclude from experience and the evidence, irrespective of what we may personally believe or desire.
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